The next week or so was almost nostalgic for me.

Almost, being the keyword. I was spending almost all of my time attending Grey in an official capacity as his apprentice.

The various leaders and backers of the Uprising would schedule multiple meetings and planning sessions, that Sylvia and I were obliged to attend. You know, since our mentors were two of the most important members.

Which was a new thing for Sylvia. She told me that Grey had rarely, if ever, asked her to attend important meetings with him in the past.

I guess lots of things changed in war.

In between the endless meetings, Honoka apparently approached Grey about taking Sylvia on as an official apprentice, in the same way that I was Grey’s. From what I heard later, the older woman had been waffling and waiting to ask for this over the last few weeks. According to Sylvia, she had been unsure if she wanted to wait for the war to be over before making the request.

Apparently, she had just gotten impatient and gone ahead with it.

Grey had no issues with it. While I hadn’t been there at the time, an amused Sylvia had told me that her father had almost offhandedly agreed to the request, to the consternation of Honoka.

So, it was official now. Sylvia wasn’t just the daughter of a figurehead of the Uprising. She was the apprentice of another, as well.

Good for her.

Even though Grey and Honoka had been dragging the two of us around to all of the meetings they were required to attend, I’d been busy with something else in between all of them. I hadn’t actually seen much of Azarus or Renauld since the parties after ‘winning’ the battle of Helstein. Azarus had apparently taken up some work with the smiths of the army and was busy churning out blades by the dozen. Meanwhile Renauld had been ‘volunteered’ by Honoka to officially join the Healing Corp of the Uprising. Renauld had assured me that he would personally be keeping an eye on Venix.

Still, they were both doing something they loved, and didn’t have much to complain about. Even if they were constantly busy.

However, I had been crafting again.

Now that we were expected to be in one place for some time while the Uprising planned their next moves, it was high time I got to work on some backlogged projects.

Firstly, I needed to replace my collapsible spear. The one that I had been forced to use for some time now was the original prototype I had constructed after we’d escaped Addersfield. My improved one had been lost in the battle of Caer Drarrow. The hunk of junk that I was using now was getting a bit worn down and ineffectual, no matter the repairs I did on it. There were only so many times you could use a mechanism like the one I’d designed before it started to crap out on you, and I didn’t want to just replace parts anymore.

No, it was time to create a good replacement. Two of them, in fact.

I think I was finally getting comfortable with dual-wielding daggers, after the infrequent practice that I had gotten in with Azarus. There had been a breakthrough for me during one of our meetups for practice. I’d been asking him to help me for a while now to learn how to do it, and I’d finally practiced enough to learn the Talent for Dual Wielding. As soon as I’d learned it, it was like something had clicked in my brain, and using a dagger in each hand became more natural for me.

Hell, an odd extension from that was that I was finding myself to be almost ambidextrous these days, whereas before I was strictly right-handed. That had only grown, when I’d gotten the Talent to level two.

Anyway, all that to say I’d been working on making a new pair of extendable daggers. Drafting was progressing pretty well on them. I’d sourced some good materials from the smiths of the city of Helstein, and I think I knew what kind of enchantments I’d be aiming for. But for now, I was focusing on refining the fiddly bits for the spears. Meaning all the little gears and mechanisms that I would have to pack inside the shell, in order for them to function. I’d even optimized it to a degree.

I think I would be able to finish construction on them in a few days, and then get to work on the enchantments I’d been planning.

All this time crafting, though, had reminded me of something else. Something that I wanted to get Grey’s opinion on. He might be pretty busy right now, but he could still spare a bit of time now and then to assist his apprentice. A project of mine that had outright failed on me, all the way back when we were sailing to Caer Drarrow.

My prototype gun.

I’d been surprised that I hadn’t lost it, on the drive all the way from Sancthaven, to Silvercrest, and finally to here.

The two of us were in one of the alchemy and testing labs that existed in the bowels of the Citadel of Helstein. The normal occupants had been more than happy to lend its usage to the two of us. Or more accurately, to Grey.

I doubt they’d given me any mind.

Grey furrowed his brow, visibly puzzled. Repeating an experiment he’d already tried, he picked up a little firestarter from the bench, and first applied it to a small amount of black powder we had synthesized. It started sizzling almost immediately, eventually sparking into a small puff of smoke.

Then, he applied that same firestarter to the borehole of my prototype gun. It had been packed with the same exact powder, along with one of my small round bullets.

Nothing happened.

The powder didn’t ignite.

Grey scratched his chin, baffled. “This is quite odd. Quite odd, indeed.”

“See?! I told you so!” I said, throwing up my hands in vindication. “I knew something else had to be happening! The basic concepts here aren’t even that complicated! Put explosive in tube, put ball on explosive, explode ball and BAM!” I clapped my hands together. With my new metal arm, it didn’t quite have the impact of flesh on flesh did. “New hole in target.”

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“Yes, yes,” Grey rolled his eyes, breaking out of his confusion. “You were correct, Nathan. There must be something else going on here. The mechanics of your black powder are a simple chemical reaction and not magical in nature. I can think of no plausible reason as to why it’s not igniting within the ‘gun’.”

I deflated. “Oh. So you have no idea?”

Grey shook his head. “Not many, no. And while this lab is quite well provisioned,” He nodded to the large lab we’d requisitioned, filled with magical equipment that I frankly had no clue about. “It doesn’t quite have the personalized tools I possess at the Academy to analyze the issue. However!” He held up a hand. “Even then, I’m not sure that this is worth pursuing any longer. It may well simply be the case that some facet of the ever-present Aether of Vereden is preventing this…specific reaction?” Even Grey sounded a little doubtful of his words.

I sighed, but nodded anyway. “Yeah, I guess. I’ll just…shelve this one for now. Anyway, that wasn’t all that I wanted you to take a look at.”

Grey raised an eyebrow at me. “Oh? Do tell.”

Picking up a small sack that I had brought with me, I withdrew a small scroll that I had been scribbling in. I rolled it out on the table in front of Grey. He leaned in to examine the lines of runes that I had inked out painstakingly over the last few days. “Ah, I see,” He said, after a moment, before straightening up and nodding thoughtfully. “The enchantments for a new generation of your spear, yes?”

I nodded. “Yeah, wanted to get your thoughts on this. See if it would all work, you know?”

“Well,” Grey started delicately, scratching his chin. “Good thing you came to me first, because this entire array would fail. Spectacularly.”

I winced. Ouch. It was just failure after failure today. “I see. What exactly is the problem, then?”

“You’re trying to fit too many conflicting enchantments into this device,” Grey said bluntly. He pointed down to a particular runic sequence. “In particular, I have to say I’m a bit baffled by your inclusion of what seems to be a modified illumination enchant. Whatever made you include that?”

“Um,” I said awkwardly. I couldn’t exactly say that I had been inspired by stories of a glowing blue short sword from back home, now could I? “I don’t exactly have a lighting Skill, and I still can’t cast Magic yet. And…I wanted an easily available source of light? I figured I could just turn my spear into a multitool.”

“Ah, I see. That old trap,” Grey said knowingly. He shook his head. “Nathan, I can’t count how many times over the years I’ve seen enchanting students try and make a ‘multi-tool’, as you call it. The desire for a one-size-fits-all artifact of some kind is common, but misplaced. Even if it looks like it might work on paper, some enchantments will simply react negatively in practice. In particular, this light enchantment would conflict with this…fire starting enchantment? And…” He paused for a moment, before shooting me an incredulous look. “Some form of lightning array?”

I winced again.

Grey shook his head with a smile. “No, I think you’ll have to start over. Perhaps you misunderstood me, when I said that the enchantments on your dagger were basic. I didn’t mean for you to add a larger variety. I wanted you to enhance the quality of the arrays on your work. That will serve you much better in combat. More esoteric arrays like those on my weapons will come at a much later date. These other enchantments would be better served being applied to specialized tools, instead. And besides,” Grey said, exasperated. “If you desired a light Skill, all you needed to do was ask, Nathan. I’d be more than happy to walk you through the process of procuring one. Some other time, though. I’m afraid that our available time for experimentation is at an end. We have a meeting with Leopold about troop deployments soon.”

I nodded resignedly in acceptance. Packing everything away, including the failed gun prototype, I scooped it all up and followed Grey out the door.

I felt a little embarrassed, now. I guess the K.I.S.S principle applied to enchantment, as well.

Remember to keep it simple, stupid.

………………………………………………………………

Days after Grey had torn down my enchanting plans for my new weapons, I was finished. I held the finished product up to the light.

This new dagger was looking pretty good, to my eyes. It was a bit less bulky, for one, due to the miniaturization of the mechanism I’d achieved. The blade was a bit longer, as well. Where before they’d been about hand length, now I would say it was nearly the length of my forearm. I had kept the shape of the blade the same, however. I’d become fond of my leaf-shaped spear blades.

It wasn’t quite as long as a short sword, however. Just a long dagger.

You would think that with the enhanced miniaturization, I might be able to fit in a few more links of shell in order to extend the haft and ultimately the spear itself. I’d considered that, but ultimately decided to shorten the spear form instead. If I was going to be dual-wielding these things, then it was much more feasible to be potentially using two short spears at once, instead of long ones. It wasn’t physically weaker, either, and not just due to the higher-quality hardening enchantment on the metal.

No, it was due to the new material I’d chosen.

This new metal was mildly magical in nature, and not just plain old steel like my old weapons. It was called Oninite. A dark, nearly black grey, it had a slight blue sheen to it that was most evident in the light. In fact, that was the effect that this metal had in the light. Instead of reflecting light as most polished and sharpened metal did, Oninite absorbed it, and displayed the slight blue sheen that was nearly undetectable in the dark.

Perfect for the assassin build I was evolving into.

Shaking off the slight pang that thought caused me, I flipped the blade in midair once before catching it. I nodded at the weight in my hand. This new version was a little heavier due to the Oninite, but it was just better overall. The reflective properties of the metal weren’t the only reason I’d chosen it, after all.

No, due to its magical nature, it had a higher enchanting load than plain steel did. I’d gone back to the drawing board and settled on four separate enchanting arrays for it, all of which were higher quality than anything I’d made before. A sharpening array so strong that it split flesh without effort, a hardening array for durability, and two new ones. The first was a penetration array, born from my frustration at being unable to pierce full plate. Even though I had Grinding Crimson Slash now, I didn’t want to rely on that for armored opponents. The tip of the spear should have an enhanced ability to pierce straight through tough armor now.

And the last?

Well.

What Grey didn’t know, he couldn’t criticize.

I activated the last array, causing a brief burst of fire to jet out from the tip of the spear.

C’mon, an easy firestarter was just too good to pass up.

This was actually the second of the daggers that I’d finished. The other I’d gotten done yesterday, while I’d just finished this today. I’d come out here to one of the small training rooms that the Citadel had in order to put it through its paces, with some weapons practice. I was intending to run through some forms that Azarus had taught me. Maybe shank a few training dummies at the same time.

I drew my second dagger from its place resting on my right hip, before getting into a stance facing a practice dummy. As far as dual-blade work went, I’d become fond of having the blade in my right hand upright, while the one in my left was in an underhand grip. I wanted to test how well that worked with two extendable daggers.

Before I could even begin though, I heard the door of the training room open. I didn’t give it any mind, though. This room was open to the public.

However, I didn’t expect the voice I heard next.

“Oh, my apologies,” I heard a youthful, dignified voice say. Eyebrows raising, I re-sheathed my blades.

I knew that voice.

Turning around, I saw that I was correct.

Sure enough, standing just inside the room with me was Prince Oskar, escorted by his asshole knight bodyguard.

The Prince smiled at me. “You…you’re Headmaster Greycton’s apprentice, yes? While I didn’t mean to interrupt your practice, I had been hoping to speak to you. Are you perhaps free now?”

I felt my eyebrows raise.

What could a Prince possibly want with me?